Reflections of a Paralytic

The Blog

I am proud to say that I am a member of Missouri Farm Bureau. Apparently this news release came out Sept. 22 and, not surprisingly, the media has completely ignored it.

Missouri Farm Bureau Board of Directors Votes to Oppose Amendment #2

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 22, 2006
For more information, contact: Missouri Farm Bureau

Missouri Farm Bureau Board of Directors Votes to Oppose Amendment #2

Based upon the policy adopted at the annual meeting of its membership, the Missouri Farm Bureau Board of Directors at its September meeting voted to oppose Constitutional Amendment #2, the so-called stem cell research and cures initiative.

The policy adopted by the Farm Bureau members at its last annual meeting reads as follows: “We are opposed to the cloning of human beings. We support adult stem cell research. We are opposed to the creation and use of human embryos or blastocysts for research purposes in which they are destroyed, discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.”Read More

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate will conduct a do-or-die vote on one
of the most important pro-life bills ever to come before the Congress
— the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA) — as early
as Friday, September 29.

All pro-life groups and citizens must immediately TELEPHONE the
offices of their two U.S. senators to urge them to vote in “in favor
of cloture on the parental notification bill, S. 403.”

So I have heard about this priest, but I have never met him. Fr. Esswein is a priest in the Archdiocese of St. Louis who is also a quadraplegic. A friend of mine went to a Mass that he was celebrating and said he did a phenomenal job speaking about stem cell research. The St. Louis Review recently wrote an article about his position on Amendment 2:

“Father Esswein also stressed that the debate on stem-cell research gives way for the argument that all human life is sacred. He has used Scripture as a basis for that argument, noting that God himself has put a “stamp of approval” on human life by sending his Son to earth as a human being, beginning at its earliest stage.

“For me, Jesus could have come at any point,” Father Esswein said. “He could have just showed up on the scene as an adult human being.

“But he didn’t. He was conceived, and he went through every stage of human life like we did. He was an embryo at one point, and that again highlights the fact that all of human life is sacred.”

We have been blessed here in Missouri to have Archbishop Raymond Burke as the head of the St. Louis Archdiocese. Many of you will remember that in 2004 he was very outspoken against pro-choice Catholic politicians. Now he is an outpoken critic of Amendment 2. Below is the intro to an article he wrote in the St. Louis Review. It’s wonderful – I wish all of our priests and Bishops would be saying this:

“As citizens of Missouri, we find ourselves in the midst of an unimaginably severe moral crisis. On this coming Nov. 7, the citizens of our state will decide whether the constitution of our state should guarantee the right to generate human life artificially in order to destroy it at its very beginning, at the embryonic stage of its development. In short, we, the citizens of Missouri, are being asked to advance the culture of death in our state so that our tiniest brothers and sisters will no longer enjoy the protection of the law but will be made legally the subjects, the slaves, of those who wish to manipulate and destroy their lives for the sake of supposed scientific and technological progress on the way to the cure of certain dread diseases and the treatment of certain severe injuries.”

A friend of mine emailed me this letter from Rachel MacNair. It’s nice and easy to understand – and worth reading, especially if you find yourself having to defend your position against embryonic stem cell research and Amendment 2.

Amendment 2: A Big Business Power Grab

With millions of dollars, Big Business is running ads portraying their war on disease the way wars are usually portrayed by their promoters: a clean and neat victory, all casualties ignored.

They promote stem cells as wonderful for cures. Are they? Most definitely. They’ve already treated or cured more than 70 diseases and conditions (see Benefits of Stem Cells to Human Patients). Exciting new developments are reported constantly.

But this has nothing to do with Amendment 2!

These advances are all from “adult” stem cells, including umbilical cords. Nobody, but nobody, has any problem with this research. The legislature is not going to interfere, except for the rules that apply to all research such as informed consent.

Amendment 2 is about “embryonic” stem cell research — while it covers the adult form also, only the research that destroys embryos is controversial.

So, how many cures have come from embryonic stem cell research? Zero.

When will cures come? Years at least. Some supporters say decades. Problems include creation of tumors in mice, along with things related to tissue rejection.Read More

Alright, so I had to comment on this. The University of Missouri is going to start distributing free condoms in the bathrooms of their residence halls. “The condoms will be placed in baskets in all dormitory bathrooms together with wallet-sized educational packets.” And why are they doing this? Because, let’s face it, “People are having sex, and let’s do something about it.” Apparently having them freely available at the university’s Student Health Center, the Women’s Center and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center was not enough. This is your tax dollars at work, Missourians.

Researchers from the University of Missouri were able to isolate adult stem cells from blood that can be turned into five types of cells. One of the main arguments in favor of embryonic stem (ES) cell research is that ES cells are pluripotent, that is, they are able to become any number of different cells. However it is becoming increasingly evident that adult stem cells have the same potential. The big difference is that, because ES cells are so young, they are harder to control and have lead to tumor formation in many or most of their animal studies. AS cells, being more mature, typically do not have this problem.

You know I bet some businesses would pay me money to do this for them. I did this in 2004 with a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker. Missouri Right to Life made these great bumper stickers, unfortunately they were just a little too long for the back of my wheelchair, so I had to improvise a little. It turned out pretty darn good too. If you look to the right you will see that my dog managed to sneak into the picture.

I finally finished the op-ed I was asked to write a few months ago and submitted it to a few papers around the state. We’ll see if any of them pick it up. Here’s a little excerpt:

This amendment is nothing more than an attack on human life at its greatest frailty, when it is unable to defend itself. When we oppose life at its most vulnerable stage we wage a war of the powerful against the weak. Human beings in the embryonic stage are not lab rats. They are humans made in God’s image. When we fail to acknowledge the beauty and dignity of the human person from its very beginning and turn humanity into a science experiment, then we diminish what it is to be human. Science tells us what we can do, not what we should do.